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Latin American countries have evolved over the years. Still, after years of military reign, socioeconomicinstability, and civil wars, the region has been known for its anti-hegemonic economic growth (educationalpolicies) strategies. Central and South America's educational system has long been under investigation by researchers both theoretically and empirically. The transition of its education system through the introduction of centralized, liberalized, and populist ideology has sparked many researchers' interest. This paper aims to understand and compare 14 Latin American countries' education orientation. The study uses a matrix table to visualize the qualitative finding.

Purpose: This paper aims to present an approach to achieve accessible and inclusive Virtual Education for all, but especially intended for students with disabilities. This work proposes main steps to take into consideration for stakeholders involved in the educational process related to an inclusive e-Learning. Design/methodology/approach: The paper pays particular regard to accessibility in Virtual Education. This work is based on the activities prepared from years 2012 to 2015 within the initiative called ESVI-AL. This initiative was carried out in conjunction with Latin American and European Universities; for this paper, experiences and best practices from the initiative were used to prepare the proposed approach. Findings: The aim of ESVI-AL initiative was to offer products that can help in the development of an accessible and inclusive e-Learning education. Among the main results were reports, case studies, practical guidelines, training courses and software to install virtual campuses with accessibility features. Social implications: Nowadays, few countries have laws promoting and enforcing accessibility for e-Education and e-Society. This work aims to sensitize educators from different countries and raise awareness on the importance of working together toward an inclusive society based on accessible e-Learning. Originality/value: Based on a literature review and ESVI-AL initiative results, a descriptive overview was prepared as a starting point for the four identified main actors of an educational project, namely, educators, technical staff, quality auditors and students, with special emphasis on students with disabilities.

This paper considers the additional uses of CALL in the Endangered Language (EL) context. It briefly reviews ELs and reports on CALL for ELs in general. It then reviews the extra uses of CALL for ELs; these include changing negative attitudes towards the language, arousing interest in the language and contributing to language maintenance and documentation. In order to demonstrate the benefits of CALL for an EL, three examples are presented. Each of the ELs discussed in this paper could be considered to be on a different scale on the Fishman (1991) Scale for an EL. The first CALL application discussed is a program for Irish for primary school children. Irish is a Celtic language and is only regularly used by about 10,000 speakers in Ireland. The main aim of the program was to try to increase the children's motivation to study Irish, which is a compulsory subject in schools in Ireland. The second application is a literacy program for Tojolab'al, a Mayan language spoken in Chiapas, Mexico. Tojolab'al could be considered to be a relatively stable language (30,000-40,000 speakers out of an ethnic population of about 80,000 people), but it has very few literate speakers. The idea of this project was to develop CALL courseware to teach literacy, beginning with the letters and then progressing to words and phrases. The third example is CALL courseware for Nawat, an Uto-Aztecan language of El Salvador. The remaining 150 speakers of Nawat are mainly elderly and illiterate and this courseware aimed to document and develop courseware for the language, while the remaining speakers were still alive. The paper concludes with lessons learnt for ELs in general from these three specific examples. It surmises that despite the difficulties involved in the CALL for EL context, if a pragmatic approach is adopted, CALL materials can have positive social benefits, which probably outweigh its contribution to language learning in the short-term. The effort involved in CALL for ELs is definitely worthwhile.

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This paper studies multidimensional poverty for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico and Uruguay for the period 1992-2006. The approach overcomes the limitations of the two traditional methods of poverty analysis in Latin America (income-based and unmet basic needs) by combining income with five other dimensions: school attendance for children, education of the household head, sanitation, water and shelter. The results allow a fuller understanding of the evolution of poverty in the selected countries. Over the study period, El Salvador, Brazil, Mexico and Chile experienced significant reductions in multidimensional poverty. In contrast, in urban Uruguay there was a small reduction in multidimensional poverty, while in urban Argentina the estimates did not change significantly. El Salvador, Brazil and Mexico, and rural areas of Chile display significantly higher and more simultaneous deprivations than urban areas of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. In all countries, deprivation in access to proper sanitation and education of the household head are the highest contributors to overall multidimensional poverty.

This paper examines 'next' generation institutional transnationalism, a concept that refers to individuals born and/or brought up in a country of settlement who are involved in transnational organisations oriented towards their country of origin - in this case Mexican and Salvadoran groups active within the United States. Building on previous research which views parental transmission as a major cause of next-generation transnationalism, this paper explores an additional and previously overlooked influence - parental involvement in cross-border organisations or causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines bilingual, intercultural education policies and practices in El Salvador and Mexico. In the context of legacies of assimilation and neoliberal homogenization, certain kinds of citizenship become prioritized over others. This is visible where performances of local identity clash with state mandates about educational content and the language of school instruction. I address the effects of state agendas in schools on the politics of multiculturalism and argue that the absence of state commitment to bilingual, intercultural education undermines democratization efforts by marginalizing certain types of citizens more than others. By considering ethnic minority education in both El Salvador and Mexico, I analyze in a comparative perspective the ways that indigenous people have been rendered invisible as citizens unless they are willing to assimilate in the arena of formal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]